


Carlton Lassiter’s Not-So-Magnificent Seven

by Attic_Nights



Category: Psych
Genre: A bit destructive at times but not fully, Accidental Voyeurism, Angst, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Abortion, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Lassiter is safe though, Multi, Pansexual Character, Post-Series, Pre-Series, Prostitution, Trans Character, i cant harm that ball of grouch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 19:18:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5176649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Attic_Nights/pseuds/Attic_Nights
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The seven people Lassiter shags, in chronological order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carlton Lassiter’s Not-So-Magnificent Seven

**Author's Note:**

> [Originally posted on my tumblr.](http://attic-nights.tumblr.com/post/132308446248/carlton-lassiters-not-so-magnificent-seven)
> 
> Also, Lassiter is [canonically pan](https://twitter.com/psychwrites/status/12603936587) \- this just expands on that titbit, and mostly uses characters from/referred to in the show. For example, #1 is mentioned in 1x05, #2 is a character in 5x13, Lucinda's from the pilot, and #7 is a blink-and-you'll miss in 4x12.
> 
> (it's been years since I first watched Psych. Carlton Lassiter WHY DO YOU HAUNT ME SO.)

**1.The Nose Ring**

He first finds Claire sprawling on a patch of campus lawn, her long pink hair fanned out in gentle waves against lush green grass, and oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses shielding her eyes from his glare. A small diamante nose ring winks up at him and he frowns. She was sprawled on _his_ patch of lawn.

His fingers almost rip his lunch bag from how tightly he clenches them. He starts up a diatribe; the same that makes his classmates flinch during role-play, but stops when she begins to sob.

He doesn’t know what to do, so he lets the silence be filled with choked tears. Eventually they peter out and she lifts her sunglasses to reveal smiling eyes.

“I’m an actress,” she explains, giggling when she takes in his ears.

He flushes harder and fights the instinct to tug his recently shorn locks over his face.

“You’re insane,” he retorts hotly, but without any true malice.

She gives him his first blowjob on that lawn. All smiles and teasing teeth. Her kisses tasting like ash and tingles, her body wiry like the springs on his cot, and all her movements fluid and practiced. Like a dancer. They'd meet up on that patch of lawn and throw cashews to squirrels.

“Bob’s so bigger than Clint. Your assginity will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.”

“As if,” he would scoff, but to be safe, he chucks another cashew towards Clint when her back's turned.

Somehow they share cheap wine on those rare nights when they're both free from responsibility. He'd hold her in his dormroom, hoping her snores wouldn’t disturb his roommate too much, and she'd always leave before dawn.

She would be brighter than the sun some days, and slower than shadows on others.

One Tuesday afternoon he finds her pills, hidden under a pile of scripts, and he hadn’t been looking for them, not really. He flushes them down the toilet, angry at himself for liking an addict, and so avoids her for three days, until he remembers he’d left his Experimental Criminology textbook at her’s.

You always remember your first crime scene, they say. Claire teaches him about manic depression, a lesson too late.

She’s trying to pry a second razor head open, but her fingers are all torn up from the first. Some of the blades are still embedded in her legs, and she’s shaking too much to take them out.

“Mood stabilizers, bring me up when I’m down and down when I’m up.” The blades slip and clatter on the bathroom floor. “Shit, I’m useless.”

He takes the razor blades from her, his frightened hands careful of the sharp bloodied edge. It’s got squirrels on it, little cartoon squirrels dancing down the razor’s handle and something in his gut churns.

“You’re right though,” she stutters, a bitter smile slashing through his heart. “If the drugs were on the streets they’d lock me up. You’d lock me up. Maybe it’s best. I’m like, careless with freedom.”

She sits there, his mistake bleeding sluggishly out on the tiled floor. She's not glowing like the sun, or creeping like the shadows. She's sprawled along an ivory white and mildew-black shower curtain with her hair fanned out in reddened waves.

He steps back and calls the ambulance, gets a fucking mention in the paper, and knows he hasn’t saved her life. He would never be able to save her life; he wasn’t some hero, some fix-it. He steps out of her life, avoids the theater, the grass and fucking squirrels. It takes just four weeks to receive confirmation of her death, from a different attempt, and he forever hates her for it.

But never as much as he hates himself for not being kinder, for not understanding her.

 

* * *

 

**2.Mr. Perfect**

Nick Conforth spends too much time making his hair perfect. He has that look, that cool look of being effortlessly put together, like he’d rolled out of bed with a smile on his face and not a hair out of place. It’s a lie. He’s sure of it.

So he follows Conforth to his room one night, jamming his shoe unnoticed between the door and jamb to stop it from locking shut. He slips inside when he hears his classmate shut the bathroom door. The wardrobe's small, but it’s the same in every room – he’d checked, at first folding into the one in his own room, then by scouting about the rooms of the few fellow police trainees that he could call acquaintances.

He makes himself comfortable amongst the rows of t-shirts and sweatpants, as the shower starts to run. The shower stops not long after, and a bare Conforth emerges with a cloud of steam. He can’t look away from the crack between the two wardrobe doors, not even as a towel is dropped and miles of golden skin are revealed. He gets hard and swallows, adjusting himself as best he can.

He can’t look away because surely, somewhere among those lush hindquarters, that combed-back wet hair, is something imperfect. Conforth is no more a hero than he is, and he hates that the man acts as such.

Then he freezes, because it’s only _just_ hit him why it’d be a bad idea to hide in another's wardrobe when the occupant is undressed.

The door swings open and Conforth – honest to fluffy tootsie rolls – actually squeaks, stumbles back, and lands on his plush behind.

Somewhere along the line helping Conforth off the floor devolves into laughter, which transforms into tears. Eventually it’s him swallowing down the other man’s length just to hear his girly squeaks and huffs of laughter again. He slips out of the room come morning, swearing and stumbling as he races to his own room.

They share a private smile on the firing range that afternoon, but Lassiter can’t quite bring himself to stop hating the man.

 

* * *

 

 **3.** **His Wife**

His future wife finds his aversion to small rodents hilarious enough that on their second meeting she gives him a porcelain Squirrel Nutkin figurine.

He flushes all the way to his beat cop blues, and thanks stars he doesn’t believe in that she’d gotten robbed on the corner of Ortega and State Street.

“You’ve been carrying this... in the off chance you’d see me?”

Victoria shrugs, her eyes as dark as her hair, and gives him a warm smile.

“You’re my hero, aren’t you?”

It’s all beautiful until she gets pregnant. He works it out before she does, but doesn’t realize it, doesn’t recognize the way her face falls or her brows pinch. He’s too excited. He hands her two dozen roses and thinks about baby names and itches to rifle through his recent thrift store purchase of _What to Expect When You’re Expecting._

He doesn’t consider that she doesn’t count her cycle like he did. That she didn’t realize her food poisoning as morning sickness, that the Pill wasn’t always effective. He’d remember in hindsight that her smile was strained when she wished him goodnight, but in that moment he’d thought it to be a smile of nervous excitement.

He wakes up to the bathroom light flickering on, his recent nightmares keeping his sleep shallow and disturbed. Her side of the bed is empty but still warm, but he leaps out at the sound of a cry.

The bathroom door yields under his hand, and he stumbles in to his wife surrounded by positive pregnancy tests. She has tears in her eyes, and she flattens herself against the tiled wall.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she stammers.

He steps towards her, confused, with his hands raised in surrender.

She looks about wildly and grasps a snow globe of New York in her hands. She shatters it, and he can only watch as she retrieves a shard the size of her thumb. She drives it into her belly, stammering, “I’ve got to get it out, I’ve got to get it out.”

He watches, frozen for a moment, as she bleeds over a miniature Lady of Liberty. Then he moves without thought, grabbing her before she can dig the shard deeper, and presses his spare hand against the gash. It’s shallow, and he holds her together until the ambulance comes, until they take her from him.

He hates snow globes from that moment on.

 

* * *

 

**4\. Spencer for Rent**

The night's a moonless cloud as he speeds away on his bike, hugging the bends of the highway. Behind him, flying gravel and dead leaves catch obligations and stress, the sounds rolling like thunder because something inside him had just…

A tavern with an obscene neon _Warren’s_ winks at him as he pulls into its gravel lot, defeated. His muscles protest sharply as he dismounts, joints cracking from being in one position for too long.

He jumps slightly at the sounds of an altercation occurring somewhere behind a semi-trailer, and at the sting of raised indignant voices and harsh tones he automatically moves his hand to his holster.

Which he isn’t wearing.

So he grits his teeth and ignores it, though he still flinches at the sound of a slap. The weight of his world was enough to bear without adding something clearly out of his jurisdiction. Jaw clenching and eyes narrowed, he moves on.

He sits alone at the bar with his eyes downturned to his whiskey sour. The door opens, jangling on its hinges. He doesn’t turn, but a few moments later lithe legs in tattered jeans straddle the stool beside him. So he looks up at the newcomer, taking in shaggy long hair and a youthful face, and decides his whiskey's more interesting.

“There’s an awesome Norton Commando out there. Is she yours?” asks the kid, sounding genuinely interested.

He clenches his jaw at the chipper sound depriving him from his thoughts. He deserved no sunshine.

“Bike like that,” continues the kid, “must be like having fifty-eight horsepower of freedom.”

“Yes, she is,” he finds himself answering, surprised despite his best efforts not to be. Of all the rough looking men with studded leather jackets and tattoos loitering in this rattrap, he’s surely the least likely to pass as a bikie.

“They’re just truck drivers.”

For a minute, he wonders whether he’d actually spoken his thoughts out loud. He peers suspiciously at his drink, which until then he’d believed to be watered down. Something in his expression amuses the kid, because he breaks into an easy smile.

“You always read minds?” he rumbles, unsure of the conversation.

“Only when I’m being annoying.” The kid grins. Annoyed, he blinks at at the open face, so fair and untarnished. “Oh, and you have helmet hair. Wanna buy me a drink?”

After insulting his hair? Not really. “Fine,” he says, signaling the bartender. “What will you have?”

“Banana Colada.”

“Is that your final answer?” he asks, slightly wary. His fingers tighten on the scotch.

In answer, the kid runs slender fingers over a peach-fuzzed face, his smile twitching in what looks like amusement. They make eye contact, and he spends a few moments puzzling over the color of the kid’s eyes. Fair, green, blue, brown.

“Nah, I just like saying the word. Banana colada banana colada. Try it. I’ll take whatever’s on tap. Yeah, any of them will do, barkeep!”

As the bartender pours his drink, he takes his cue from her and refrains from asking for the kid’s ID. 18 max, he’s pitching him.

Tiredness creeps into his bones again, rendering him immovable as ice. No, that wasn’t quite right. Ice drifted, solid, immense and powerful. Armies march across warping ice. Battles rage or ruin due to ice. It’s slippery, cruel but beautiful. But he can’t bear the weight of armies or inspire greatness to poets with his hidden depths. His bones are weak powder snow tumbling to earth on a bitter Tuesday morning. Pathetic little flurries that spill alongside lukewarm coffee into bloodied slush puddles.

His hands tremble. He puts down his glass, counting back from 100 by sevens until he can breathe without images of snow and blood.

“So what’s your story?” he asks eventually, mentally kicking himself over the cliché.

“Same as you. Running. Dancing. Living life out of pockets, sometimes with no pockets. Talking to strange men in bars.”

Lovely. “You’re a hitchhiker.” The only vehicle that’s not a truck or car equivalent of a truck in the lot had been a beat up Chevy and he’s betting it’s the bartender’s. He’s heard no other cars pull up since.

“Bingo!”

He takes a moment to stare disapprovingly over his half-drunk sour. He desperately wants to be rude and tell the kid to zip it, but he’s been rude enough over the past few months. He drowns that train of thought with the last of the glass.

“So ah do you have a hotel room or something?”

He shakes his head. “Why, do you know of a good place?” He’s tired, he realizes. The alcohol soothing his tired, aching frame. He wonders briefly if the snow in his bones is melting under the kid’s sunny attitude. He shakes his head swiftly, though softly this time.

“Well,” the kid smiles shyly, “I know I could make it good for a price.”

The boy’s hand comes to rest on his thigh, warm through his slacks. It doesn’t intrude, just rests. He looks at it, distracted by bruising and redness around the knuckles and automatically cataloged the dirt caught under kid’s chewed nails, before he realizes what the kid meant.

If he had whiskey in his mouth he would've spat it out. As it is, he coughs several times, chest panicking. Recovering, he settles for a glare. The bartender ambles over, leaning on the counter in a guise of concern. He grabs proffered water like a lifeline. As soon as it's downed he stands up, intent on the door.

“Cheers,” the kid says, thanking the woman for him. “Hey, could you tell me where the nearest motel or something is?”

“This place is stopover, not a tourist town. Ain’t got no real place before Williams. That’s ah… a good twenty minutes away. Or westbound’s Needles a windy thirty.”

He walks out the door as the sentence ends, intending getting on his bike and driving far, far away. The tavern slams shut and he freezes mid-stride.

“Y’know, I know you’re a cop, but you look like you could need something,” comes a drawl, piercing in the moonless night.

He turns and blinks slowly, frowning.

“If you know I’m a cop, then you know why this is a _very_ bad idea. Turn around and walk away, kid.”

“You’re Mr. Goody Two Shoes in a leather jacket. A stickler for the rules and protocol; yet here you are, running away. You’re strong and need to protect and serve and all that. Safe, I think. And I need cash, so we both win.”

He prickles at the notion of being _safe._ “Cash? What could you want it for?” What could be worth breaking the law for?

“Pringles mostly. Oh!” The kid leans forward until he can feel their heat through their clothes. “And hubba bubba.”

“Look,” he says, stepping backwards, face blank. “I think I ought to go now.”

He’s about to swing onto his baby when the kid’s speaks, behind him.

“Hey, wait! We, um, may have gotten off on the wrong foot. But I haven’t slept in days and this isn’t exactly a safe place. Look, it’s a mutually beneficial agreement. I trust you. I don’t trust them.”

“Yeah? Well it’s a mutually stupid agreement.” _Wow, master of eloquence there, Carlton._ He feels color stain his face. Him, the best option of a bad lot.

The point stands though. For a brief and terrifying moment he imagines the kid curling up out in the elements to fall asleep, or even worse, turning to another patron of the bar. Which one of those truck drivers would he approach? They all seem to blend in as sweating, pale mass of wiry hair and tattoos, and he can too-clearly see them shoving into the kid's fragile figure.

He tries again: “It’s illegal. As in, _I could get charged._ Lose my job. Or, more pleasingly, I could charge _you_ now and have you spend the night in a holding cell. Want that? Actually, I like that. Let's go with that.”

“Tempting, but unfortunately you’re out of your jurisdiction for you to properly book me for a 653.20 to .28.”

He blinks, distracted at the use of the California Penal Code. He’s fairly sure they aren’t even in California any more, and it takes a moment to wonder if whatever state he’s in had a similar code for the kid to know it. Meanwhile, the lithe, tattered body has moved into his personal space. And in slow motion, he sees the kid lean forward. And the world stops, held suspended aside from two plump looking lips. He hears the sharp intake of breath. Feels wet heat as the distance between their lips closes for the world to spin again, warp speed.

Wet heat. His knees buckle.

 _No_. The world jerks to a halt.

He tries again to form the word “No.”, but his lips refused to cooperate. The kid searches his face and pouts.

“Just to get me to the next town.”

“And the next bed?” he can’t help but ask.

“That depends. Are you a fan of delicious manflesh?”

“How about I drive you somewhere safer tonight.

“How about you drive into me?”

“I’d rather learn to play the bassoon.”

Something soft and nostalgic flickers over the kid’s features.

So he sighs. “Why do you trust me?”

“Puhleaze.” The kid sidles up into his personal space.

“It’s not like I have any real cash on me. What do you charge?” A small part of him recoils from the situation, but it isn’t quite disgust.

The kid bubbles out a detailed laundry list of prices, finishing with an embarrassing, “Plus for deals over $60 you get very own bed warmer thrown in, free of charge.”

He grits his teeth. The prices are high, in more ways than one. “What about I just get you to the next town with a train station?”

“And an ATM?”

“No.”

“Live a little. I can tell you want me. One night, no strings, no obligations. A simple business transaction. Just a bit of living money and a bit of heat.”

A hand rests on his inseam. Well, his cock isn’t exactly linked to his brain. Just say no.

No.

No.

He swallows. “Please.”

He feels damn silly taking the outstretched pinkie promise, but the kid smiles brightly, innocently, and his heart stutters at the fragile touch.

He hands the kid his helmet and swings onto his baby. The leather seat creaks softly as the kid presses behind him, arms wrapping around his midsection.

As they fly over a dip in the road their bodies readjust and suddenly he can feel the kid’s arousal pressing into his back. Heat rushes through him, unbidden. He’s doing his job, needed to keep this kid safe, not provide a rutting toy. He can be a hero, he thinks as he grits his teeth against a yawn.

They’re gone about ten minutes when a soft voice calls, “Stop” over the wind, bare fingers lightly tapping his arm. He slows and pulls over.

“The barn—you see it, Slim?”

He nods and parks between a hedge and a sapling; his long legs allow him to step over the fence with ease and he watches amused as the kid awkwardly tries to do the same, despite only being a inch or so smaller.

Inside, the barn’s dark, musty, warm and still. There are soft snuffling noises from the workhorses, and a cat’s eyes glow green in the moonlight through the open door before it dashes off with its tail puffed.

He feels the kid’s firm hand in his own — somehow, at some point they’ve connected — and finds himself tugged along to the loft. They climb the ladder slowly, each squeak and groan of wood spiking his adrenaline for fear of discovery from the proprietor. No longer was he tired and aching; a sense of the forbidden washes over him and leaves his palms sweating.

Within a cardboard box the kid discovers a couple of picnic blankets and he lays these out on musty straw. He reaches into his rucksack and pulls out a towel.

“Why do you have a towel?” he muses, distracted.

“I’m a hitchhiker,” comes the vague response.

Then he’s in Carlton’s personal space, eyes quicksilver in the moonlight.

“The ball’s in your court," soft lips whisper. “Anything you want, let me help,” he says, breath ghosting over his cheek.

They lie side by side, facing each other. Warm breath tickles his cheek, and he’s not sure who's done it, but the distance between them is suddenly closed.

Soon it’s all wet heat and twining limbs. The kid's stronger than he reckoned and he clings to him as he scratches his name into his back. They’re nothing but pure grinding, close rhythms, wrapped in a haze of pleasure. It's more like making love than anything he’d shared with Victoria; the notion strikes him like her hand had, warm and stinging, with a sense of shock that edges away, leaving him empty, but not bereft for it.

So when the kid looks down shyly and tilts his lips forward, he can do nothing but meet this lovely boy halfway and kiss into him his everything, his soul, his troubles and his capacity to feel.

Under a roiling sky he sees the boy off on the concourse of Williams train station, Arizona. Freshly withdrawn bills sit heavy in his pocket – initially he hadn’t wanted any witnesses to suspect the nature of their transaction. Now, the kid watches him with dancing, unfathomable eyes. He wants to say that he sees in those eyes some regret at their parting, but there’s none he can read.

He doesn’t deserve any, anyway.

The kid licks his lips. “You gonna make good on that deal?”

Impulsively he gives the kid his keys. “This ought to cover it.”

He walks away, intent on catching the next train home, leaving the young man speechless for the first time since their meeting. He allows himself a small smile.

If he could get her back, Victoria would be happy that he left his bike behind. He doesn’t think he’d tell her the details, though.

 

* * *

 

**5 & 6, the discreet.**

“I’m sure he won’t mind– oh! Lassiter!”

Lucinda Barry jiggles slightly as she tips into the chair next to him, blond flyaway hair sticking to red lips.

He frowns at her, and frowns at the tall, handsome man behind her. They are both handsome, too pretty for him, and he frowns into his whiskey sour.

“This is Detective Lassiter,” she half-yells to her date, the live band almost swallowing her words. She leans into his space, right into his ear, and explains, “He’s Marty. _Third_ date, y’know.”

Belatedly, he nods at the both of them, and gets caught for a moment staring at Marty’s dark eyes and darker lashes.

“You here for the band?” Marty asks, repeating himself twice before he gets heard.

He shakes his head and downs his scotch.

“Where’s Victoria?” Lucinda leans closer to him, until he can smell her perfume. “Wife?”

“Separated,” he yells into silence, the band just then finishing their latest song. He scrubs his hand nervously over his neck, ordering another whiskey sour to taint the memory of Victoria’s sweeter kisses.

Lucinda’s lips are parted in shock, and Marty rests a hand on his shoulder, which he quickly shrugs off.

“Since when?”

He laughs bitterly.

He gets ridden hard that night, desperately and painfully, Marty’s nails just this side of sharp. And he smiles through it, shudders with delight, because it’s perfect. Marty ignores his calls, so when Lucinda propositions him a couple of weeks later, he doesn’t feel too guilty in accepting her offer. She’s almost rougher than Marty, but she’s fairer than Lucifer himself against her ivory sheets, so he eats her out, buys her lunch and pretty earrings, and revels in the delight that arises from their secret relationship.

 

* * *

 

**7\. No, it doesn’t mean an attraction to a kitchen tool**

He meets Sam Romero when he most needs him, at the department’s annual picnic. The sun's burning his face, his colleagues are brash and silly, and the biscuit lady had had too many Chardonnays. He hadn’t even wanted to kiss her- she just grabbed him by the ears and dragged him down.

Sam asks for his help at the park’s barbecue, to do clean up, so he gratefully takes newspaper and scrubs it along the hotplates. There’s a prickle of familiarity as he takes in dark eyes and dark lashes, and they chat with an ease that’s been lacking in his life of late.

“You’re brave to work HR,” he confesses, thinking about how difficult people are. He deals with perps like he deals with his brother’s spoilt kids – tolerated until he could pass them back or onwards.

“Aren’t you Head Detective?” Sam says, and shakes his head.

Their fingers brush as they both reach for a pair of soiled tongs, and his heart quickens at the electricity that sparks from that small touch.

He could use someone in his life who could talk, who could navigate him around the strange waters of social niceties. Victoria had done that, but she had also enjoyed leaving him adrift.

So he gives Sam his number.

“Are you gay?” Sam asks, his smile wavering for just a moment.

He frowns, because somewhere in not making his private life public, he’d never actually considered the word “gay” and “him”.

He eventually settles on, “You could be a juggling vegan and I wouldn’t give two craps about it. Actually, that’s a lie. I hate vegans.”

Sam’s smile wavers even further, and he bends down low to whisper, “And if I was trans?”

He thinks of all the hate crimes he’s pulled over the years. The innocents left bloodied or worse, and the bastards who walked because a system couldn’t comprehend the victims. He looks at how Sam seems to cower, and rolls his eyes.

“Well, let me just go on record as saying that I still don’t give a crap. Coffee, Wednesday?”

Oddly enough, it’s Guster who informs him what _pansexual_ means, after accidentally walking in on him and Sam in the – you know what? Never mind. What’s important is how Guster, the straightest man to ever wear lavender, looks him in the eye and tells him it’s okay.

“You tell Spencer and I’ll turn the hose on your collection of suede loafers.”

He’s not sure why it matters, because at the moment, he actually is almost happy. Sam Romero pegs him like a champ, loves Paul Newman films, and hates rabbits. Which, y’know, he can dig.

But when he presses a kiss to him after a particularly difficult case, and breathes, “My hero,” Lassiter realizes it's time to let him go.

 

* * *

 

**\+ The Unfortunately Magnificent**

He’d like to say Shawn Spencer was unprecedented in his life, but that’s not really true. There’s days when he stares at Spencer’s bike – not a frequent occurrence, because the con was a leech and traveled with others whenever he could – but he'll stare at the bike and wonder if it was once his. Whether they’d met in Arizona all those years ago. When the opportunity comes to anonymously reunite Spencer with his impounded Norton, he takes it.

Shawn Spencer was full of the impossible. Full of contradictions. Full of himself. So naturally, it starts off small. It starts with smiles and growls and pineapples. When Sears has a sale he buys nearly $100 worth of ties, just because it’s Spencer who mentions it. He pops his collar to reveal his ‘sternbush’ when Spencer tells him to, and restocks Shawn’s fridge when he thinks he won’t be noticed.

But then Spencer is almost too close, like how he calls him Binky sometimes. Like that Christmas he'd uncomfortably receives dozens of snow globes. Shawn sits in his lap and calls him sexy, steals his collars and rejoices in being named a hero. The fake psychic saves sea lions and polar bears, liars and priests – and, somewhere along the line, he saves Carlton Lassiter. Which smarts something terrible, and causes him to smile when he least expects it.

He listens to an awful song by The Bangles one morning, wondering how he was going through his peanut butter so quickly, when he begins to cry. It’s stupid, he’s never cried to music before, never mind a song as freaking ridiculous as this, but all he can think about is how he hates how well Spencer’s “sun shines through the rain.” There’s tears dripping onto his PBJ, salting the bread, but that only makes him sob harder. He's useless. With shaking hands he turns the music up so loud in the hope that it consumes him.

So he buys the biggest bottle of pineapple schnapps he can and spends the next morning hungover and dehydrated. He spends the next few months sour and sober and sleepless by turns, loving every moment spent without his pest, but hating how much he misses him. It gets so bad he burns a voicemail of Spencer’s voice to CD on the likely chance the fake psychic does something stupid, like gets himself killed.

“I can’t do it,” he tells O’Hara one day.

She shoves at him good-naturedly, and because his knees are shaking he almost falls over.

“You’re fine. You’re magnificent, Carlton,” she says, adjusting his tie for the eighth time that morning. “And you’re gonna go up there and seal that deal.”

He looks at her smiling face. “What did I do to deserve you?”

“We’re family,” she informs him. “All of us are.”

“I screw things up,” he argues. “I’m no hero. In fact, right now, I’d rather be chased by a grizzly squirrel across ice. Or that polar bear. Why was there a polar bear? What is my life?”

She rolls her eyes and pushes him forward. “You think he wants a hero? He just needs you to love him.”

He squares his shoulders, catching his reflection in a nearby mirror. He’s not so bad. He’s not perfect, not with the way his ears stick out and his arms hang too long.

“I’ll do it,” he decides, and Juliet squeals, clasping her hands together. He kisses her on the forehead and breathes. He goes through the steps, the words, the ceremony and tradition, right until he hears Shawn throw his words back at him.

_“I do.”_


End file.
